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I am teaching a 4-week, online class on Pagan Consent Culture at Cherry Hill Seminary this September. Consent culture begins with the idea of sovereignty, with recognizing our right to control our bodies and selves in all areas of life. This class will define consent culture in a Pagan context, examine Pagan theological resources for building consent culture, explore strategies for normalizing seeking consent to touch, give recommendations for safeguarding policies at events, and more.﻿

New book: everything you know about the Kitty Genovese murder is probably wrong. As it turns out, Genovese was gay, as was one of the only two eyewitnesses to her death. How might this fact have affected witnesses' willingness to call the police and police responsiveness?﻿

Good short piece for that relative or friend who doesn't understand privilege, but who hasn't yet been browbeaten so much about it that s/he's stopped listening. Comics are much, much better than call outs.﻿

PAGAN COMMUNITY STATEMENT ON THE ENVIRONMENT: SIGN BY JUNE 21 FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT

In this time of accelerating environmental change, many Pagans feel a sense of urgency to help transform humanity’s relationship with the Earth. This sense of urgency is what drew together a large and diverse group of diverse Pagans, including Pagan writers, artists, and academics, to draft “A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment.” The drafting process took 6 months, at the end of which the statement was posted for a period public comment, followed by another round of revisions. On Earth Day 2015, the final version of the statement published at ecopagan.com and made available for signatures. Over the past three weeks, almost 4,000 signatures have been collected, from all over the world, from Pagans of every kind.

The drafters of the statement hope to collect 10,000 signatures by summer solstice (June 21). This will coincide with the anticipated publication of Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical. The Pope’s statement is expected to be historical, and it is already drawing a lot of media attention. A previous environmental encyclical by Pope Benedict explicitly contrasted Catholic earth stewardship with “neo-paganism”. Another, more recent, statement by Pope Francis suggests he may have a similar perspective on Paganism. Regardless of whether Pope Francis explicitly mentions Paganism this summer, the Catholic statement will likely generate talk in the press about Paganism, and this is an ideal opportunity for us to share a Pagan vision of ecological sustainability with the world.

Please visit ecopagan.com to read the statement and consider signing the statement and adding your voice to those already raised in defense of all life on Earth.

Please also considering sharing this message with the link to www.ecopagan.com with at least 5 Pagan friends.﻿

I find this to be a beautiful response, mostly for the nuanced understanding of "proactive regret" and general risk tolerance, both of which are as applicable to non-parenting situations as to parenting. Adding the complexity of being responsible for a child to either of those equations is HARD, and I am always thrilled to see people discussing "safety" with such honesty, clarity, and empathy. Thank you for sharing the link!﻿

The film EX MACHINA. Awesome psychological thriller that doubles as a wonderful "catch the reference" game -- it's full of visual and other references to BLADE RUNNER, 2001, GHOST IN THE SHELL, and more. Also, it's not without violence, but I've noticed a lot of new SF&F that's so violent that watching it feels like an assault. EX MACHINA, on the other hand, builds its tension very very quietly. Loved it.

Also, for those of you (like me) who read everything Octavia Butler ever wrote and then wondered who else was writing really fine post-colonial SF, let me recommend Nnedi Okorafor. I just finished WHO FEARS DEATH and pretty much couldn't put it down during the second half of the book. ﻿